Buddha makes you tolerant: Eastern religions as leading to low ethnic and religious prejudice.

Clobert, Magali [UCL] Saroglou, Vassilis [UCL] Hwang, Kwang-Kuo [National Taiwan University]

The link between several religious dimensions and many kinds of prejudice (ethnic, religious, anti-gays and anti-atheists) has been established for decades. However, researchers in that field conducted their investigations only in Western cultural and religious contexts. Do these findings also hold for Eastern religions and Asian cultures? As Eastern cultures are characterized by holistic thinking style and Buddhism is generally perceived as a tolerant religion/spirituality, the generalisability of such findings is doubtful. We will here review three recent studies conducted both in Asia and Europe among believers of Eastern religions. In Study 1 (N = 102), using implicit measures of prejudice (IAT), religiosity was found to be negatively related to religious (Muslims) and ethnic (Africans) prejudice among Taiwanese people from a Buddhist/Taoist tradition. In Study 2 (N = 116), Westerners converted to Buddhism primed supraliminally with Buddhist words (word search puzzle) showed decreased islamophobia and prejudice against ethnic (Africans and Americans) and religious (Hindus, Muslims, and atheists) outgroups. Finally, in Study 3 (N = 167), we found that priming subliminally Buddhists words versus Christian words (Lexical Decision Task) among Taiwanese students from a Buddhist/Taoist tradition decreased prejudice against Africans (IAT). Furthermore, Buddhist versus Christian priming indirectly predicted lower prejudice against Muslims (IAT). This effect was mediated by an increase in tolerance toward contradictions. These results suggest that Eastern religiosity does not seem to predict prejudice as it is the case with Western religiosity. Quite the opposite, Eastern religiosity, through an enhancement of tolerance toward contradictions (dialectical thinking), can even promote tolerance. These findings challenge the generalizability of earlier research and suggest that the religiosity–prejudice relation may depend on the specific religious and cultural context.